Chocolate That Cures Acne, Potato Chips That Lower Cholesterol -- Here Come the Nutraceuticals to a Store Near You

Cinnamon is no longer just the spunky spice on cinnamon toast. Turmeric is no longer just the bitter yellow dust that colors curry.

These days, both are hailed as superpowered disease-fighting "nutraceuticals" — part nutrient, part pharmaceutical. Along with many other once-humble substances (think pomegranates, fish oil and flax seeds), they're key ingredients in "functional foods," which comprise a booming $30-billion-a-year industry bent on erasing the border between medicine and meals.

When is candy not candy? When are potato chips not potato chips? When are crisp salty discs and dark-chocolate balls not mere hedonistic treats? When they're functional foods, in this case Corazonas chips and foil-wrapped Frutels — bought in hopes of lowering cholesterol and curing acne.

For fear of FDA/FTC backlash, functional-food companies must exercise great care in promoting such near-miracles. But consumers are fluent in the lexicon by which thousands of new products are marketed — and old products reframed — as not just tasty but "healthy" and "scientifically proven," "according to studies," "to reduce the risk" of very specific, sometimes very deadly diseases.

Energy bars and energy drinks are just the tip of this antioxidant-enhanced, vitamin-enriched, high-fiber iceberg. In a fear-driven, science-obsessed society that's queasy about health care costs, it's just what the doctor didn't order. ("Based on cutting-edge science, Frutels contains vitamins and minerals shown to strengthen the body ... and help clear skin of blemishes," reads the company's Web site.) Brownies that prevent macular degeneration? Soda pop that fights cancer? Bring 'em on — and thank you, folic acid and epigallocatechin gallate!

As defined by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, nutraceuticals include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, other botanicals, and that amorphous category known as dietary supplements. Some truly inspiring products have emerged. Megabrands are riding this bandwagon to the bank as well. Several pages of Welch's Web site — headlined "The Science" — praise the power of polyphenol antioxidants in grape juice. General Mills boasts that the cereals in its "Big G" line — including Lucky Charms, Chocolate Cheerios and Trix — "are made with whole grains, which deliver vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients. That’s important, because studies suggest that whole grains may help reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and certain types of cancer."

Giving the acronym FWB a whole new meaning — food with benefits — nutraceuticals hark back to preindustrial folk remedies. Given that this ancient science of roots and fruits spawned Chinese herbal medicine, ayurvedic medicine and Western pharmacology, embracing ancestral wisdom in the form of antiviral pizza and anticancer jam can't hurt.

Whether it can actually help remains to be seen, warns physician Stephen DeFelice, who coined the word "nutraceutical" in the 1970s and now heads the New Jersey-based Foundation for Innovation in Medicine. A former NIH fellow in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolic disease and chief of clinical pharmacology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, DeFelice has spent the last 30 years advocating for better research into nutraceuticals, to little avail. The functional-foods industry, he sighs, "is all marketing, marketing, marketing without the clinical research to back it up."

Most of those "scientific studies" cited on labels "have been stupidly designed," he says, and entail only test tubes and laboratory animals but not human beings.